I read recently that from Obama's perspective, the role of the Supreme Court is, at least in part, to favor the "weak" over the "strong." Based on his comments, he considers the weak to be minorities, women, employees (vs. employers), etc. and it sounded to me like he is in favor of the court deciding cases on some sort of power-balancing rather than the merits of the individual case.

Personally, I disagree. Maybe I missed something in my high school or college classes on American government, but I was pretty sure the role of the Supreme Court was to decide matters of constitutionality. No legislating from the bench, no letting emotion cloud judgment. Just the merits, and just whether the matter at hand is constitutional or not.



But putting that aside, I find this supposed championing of the "weak" to be disingenuous at best. After all, if you really want to talk about the weak and the strong, who in our society could be considered more weak, more in need of protecting, than our children? Particularly, our newborn babies, and yes, even unborn babies. And yet, Obama has repeatedly voted against the interests of newborns if they are so unfortunate as to have the "strong" (namely their mothers and doctors) decide that they should die. If I'm not mistaken, even Planned Parenthood dropped it's opposition to the bill when language was added stating that it could not be construed to interfere with Roe v. Wade.

It's not even about abortion, this is about babies who are born alive, outside the mother's body, no longer connected physically to the mother. And yet Obama voted to deny them basic medical care that might well save their lives. How, exactly, is that being a champion of the weak?

As a mother of two preemies, I can assure you that there is nothing "magical" about 9 months gestation. In fact, some babies born as early as 24 weeks have survived thanks to the miracles of modern medicine. Even if a child is born before there is a chance of survival outside the womb, is it not the humane thing to do to offer them medical care and try to make them as comfortable as possible?

I find it telling that a man who votes "present" on so many issues to avoid taking a stand, is so firm and forthright in his stance supporting abortion rights. He sees babies as a burden rather than a gift (and I obviously disagree). He has even gone so far as to say that if elected, the first thing he would do as president is sign the "Freedom of Choice Act," which would essentially eliminate ANY restrictions on abortion (even late-term abortion and partial-birth abortion) as well as eliminate any parental notice laws that currently exist in many states.

Apparently this is something he cares deeply about. But Mr. "Compassion" can't very well pretend to be the champion of "the weak" and talk about taking care of "the least of these" when he is so callous and uncaring in his attitudes towards babies, who are truly the "least of these," and the "weak" in our society.

Posted on Saturday, November 01, 2008